Prague Day 4

We were being picked up at 8, so we had to get up pretty early to pack and have breakfast. This was our hotel room.

In summary Prague was very beautiful and interesting, the architecture on every street is amazing and there are statues all over the place. For example this was just an office building down the street from the hotel.

Prices were still pretty cheap despite the long time it's been a tourist attraction. Typical price for a beer was about £1.20 for 0.5l, and I don't think we paid more than £20 for a meal for two with drinks.

The trip home went smoothly, we were back at the house by about 1pm.

Prague Day 3

After another good breakfast we caught the tram up to Prague Castle

Inside we visited the St Vitus Cathedral, a huge building full of loads of "bling".

We then went in to the royal palace and the basilica.

Next was Golden Lane. a quaint street full of shops and trades people which got its name from the gold craftsmen who used to be there.

Upstairs in one of them was a display of torture instruments.

Another was an old tavern.

We then went out the bottom entrance of the castle, and caught the tram back up the to Salm palace, which had a huge display of paintings.

There were other palaces and art galleries we could have visited, but we'd had enough culture for a while. We walked back down into the old town and climbed up the west Charles Bridge tower.

For lunch we went to Tom's Burger, where we had burger and nachos, pretty good. We then caught the Metro to Florenc station and visited the City of Prague museum, where we saw a 3D film and scale model of the city.

We then walked to Republic Square and had a wander round the Palladium shopping centre. After this we were looking for somewhere to have a drink and stumbled across the Beer Museum pub, which had a large selection of Czech beers.

After catching the tram back to the hotel we had a rest and got ready to go out for dinner.

The choice this time was the Ferdinanda which was very near the hotel. Between us we shared sirloin steak and bacon, pork with cheese and mushrooms, and bread with garlic and cheese. It was all very good.

After this we went for a last drink at Bredovský Dvůr.

Prague Day 2

We had breakfast in the hotel, it was excellent - bacon, sausage and eggs, fresh fruit, cereal, cheese and ham, pastries etc.

We had purchased Prague Cards online for 46 euros each, which give free entry to many of the attractions and unlimited use of public transport for 2 days. We were to collect these in the tourist information centre in the old town so we walked there from the hotel. It was quite cold and cloudy, but dry and not unpleasant.

The first thing we did after collecting the cards was to use them to go up the tower in the old town hall, where the astronomical clock it. The views were great from the top.

Next we went in to the old town hall itself, for which we got a guided tour. This was really good, she was very knowledgeable and enthusiastic. She also took us into the underground vaults which were actually palaces from the days when the ground level was lower. They deliberately raised the ground level to avoid flooding.

At the end of the tour we discovered that the guide had spent holidays in St Monans and Anstruther in Fife, and had been swimming in the sea there!

We then walked to the Jewish quarter, and first visited the Pinkas Synagogue, in which the walls are painted with the names of more than 77,000 people who were killed in the holocaust.

Next to that is the old Jewish Cemetery, which is an amazing muddle of closely packed grave stones, because the bodies are buried up to 12 deep because of the limited space.

We then took the tram to Petrin Hill, and walked up to the base of the 63.5m high Petrin Tower. This is like a mini Eiffel Tower, built for an exhibition in 1891.

We climbed to the top, from where the views were even better than from the town hall tower.

Then we visited the adjacent mirror maze, which was good for a laugh.

We walked down through the park, which was very nice. It was quiet but I bet it's very busy in summer. We went for lunch at U Fleku, which is the largest restaurant in the Czech Republic with 1200 seats, and has its own brewery. We had salad, cold smoked pork neck and potato pancakes, washed down with some of their own dark beer. This was the only place all week where we really felt we were in a tourist-trap, they were trying to push liqueurs and bread onto you which they charged for.

After lunch we caught a tram down the river to the Vysehrad area, where we walked up the hill and through the Leopold gate.

We walked round the old fortifications, cemetery and cathedral there. then the rain came on. To shelter we went into the casements which are passages within the walls which were used to hide whole regiments of soldiers. We got a guided tour and the guide took us along a passage to a storage area, where are stored the originals of some of the statues on Charles Bridge, which have been replaced by replicas.

When we came out the rain had stopped so we walked back down towards the river to catch the tram back. We stopped for a drink at U Zlate Kotvy on the way. The tram then took us back to Wenceslas Square from where we walked to the hotel.

After a rest we got ready to go out. We'd chosen a restaurant called U Bulinu in the Vinihrady area from TripAdvisor, so we got the Metro to Namesti Miru station. We weren't let down, Scott had the pork ribs with toasted bread where were amazing, Shirley had beef casserole with carrots and potatoes.

After dinner we caught the Metro back - some of the escalators in the stations are amazingly long.

We had a drink in Bredovský Dvůr before going to bed.

Prague Day 1

We took a taxi to Edinburgh airport for our flight to Prague at 7.20am. It left in good time and we arrived early just before 11. It was dry and fairly mild but cloudy.

Our airport transfer minibus dropped us off at our hotel, Hotel Yasmin in the New Town. Our room wasn't ready yet so we left our bags and went for a walk.

The hotel was just round the corner from Wenceslas Square, where there are lots of shops and department stores. We walked towards the Old Town Square, and coincidentally arrive just before the famous Astronomical Clock struck 12. There was a large crowd waiting to see it.

The 12 apostles rotate round in the windows when it strikes.

The bottom section is a calendar.

We then walked up to the river, down the river bank a bit, and over the Charles Bridge. It was fairly busy, but probably had only a fraction of the tourists that would be there in the peak season.

On the other side of the bridge we walked up the hill to find a restaurant we'd checked out on TripAdvisor, the Malostranska Beseda. We had Gnocchi with cheese sauce, and roast beef with bread dumplings.

After lunch we walked back towards the Old Town, passing the Lennon Wall, a tribute to pacifism and John Lennon.

We then went to the hotel, checked in and had a snooze before getting ready for dinner.

We walked south from the hotel through Riegrovy Sady Park, which was a hill so it had great views over the city.  At the far side we went to a pub called The Tavern, where we had a beer. We walked back down Vinohradska and passed an interesting-looking bar called Dno Pytle which had a good selection of beers so we went in there for one.

For dinner we went to the bar/restaurant literally across the road from the hotel, Bredovský Dvůr. This was the view from our bedroom window.

By pure coincidence it has one of the best reputations in the city. They specialise in Pilsner Urquell straight from the "tank", so we had a few of those. To eat, between us we had "Czech nosh" (roast pork meat, spicy sausage, roast duck) with three types of dumpling and cabbage, and a plate of grilled sausages.